Welcome to Bogleheads on Investing, episode number 48. Today, our special guest is Rob Berger. Rob was a litigating attorney before changing careers and following his passion by providing free online investment tools and a broad range of financial education. Hi, everyone. My name is Rick Ferry, and I'm the host of Bogleheads on Investing.

This episode, as with all episodes, is brought to you by the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people make better financial decisions. Visit our newly designed website at boglecenter.net to find valuable information and to make a tax-deductible contribution. And don't forget about our Bogleheads conference coming up this October 12 through the 14th, featuring many speakers that I've had on this podcast and more.

There are a few seats remaining. You don't want to miss out. Visit boglecenter.net for more information. Today, our special guest is Rob Berger. Rob was a litigating attorney in a previous life. He received his JD from Boston University in 1992 and worked as a litigator in the securities industry and the technology industry.

In 2007, he started a website called doorroller.net, which received tens of millions of visitors. After selling that website in 2018, he became a Forbes deputy editor. And he published a book called Retire Before Mom and Dad. Rob is now the host of the Financial Freedom Show. He publishes in-depth, detailed reports on all of the free technology and low-cost technology that's out there to investors on his website, robberger.com.

And he has also started a website for credit cards and banking called allcards.com. With no further ado, let me introduce Rob Berger. Welcome to Bogleheads Uninvesting Podcast, Rob. Rick, thanks so much for having me. It's really great to have you on the podcast. You and I have known each other for many years.

And I know that you've interviewed me a few times. And now it's my chance to interview you. But I've just always been amazed at all of the information that you put out and have been putting it out for 15 years, a long time. Before we get started on where people can find that information and what you've done, could you give us a little background on who you are?

How did you decide to get into this line of work? Because it's not what you always did. So I was a lawyer in Washington, DC. And at the time I started my first personal finance site, I was actually an enforcement attorney at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates the auditors of publicly traded companies.

And I'd been investing for 20 years. And I was very interested in really all aspects of personal finance. And I said to my wife one day, I'm kind of bored with the practice of law. What should I do? She goes, well, get a hobby. Out of that came a personal finance blog that at the time was just sort of a hobby.

I enjoyed thinking about these issues, writing about them. And over a number of years, it turned into a business. I ended up retiring from the practice of law. Then I did some work at Forbes. I published a book, "Retire Before Mom and Dad." And it ended up selling my original sites.

And I've started new ones and a YouTube channel. And now I'm talking to you. So you were a lawyer. You were a litigator. You started the website. And the name of the website was Dough Roller. Did that for 11 years. And then you also became a Forbes deputy editor.

Yeah, so it kind of happened how life sometimes opens doors that you're not expecting. So I had sold Dough Roller. I sold Dough Roller and the Dough Roller Money podcast and a couple of other sites in 2018. And literally just a few days after that, I went up to New York.

I'd been a contributor at Forbes. Actually, by the way, thanks to you, you introduced me to Janet Novak. Oh, okay, thank you. Right, so really this is all your fault. Okay. So we were up on Forbes Fifth Avenue location in New York. And it was for contributors. And I just talked to Janet afterward.

And I said, yeah, by the way, I sold Dough Roller and the next day she calls me and says, we wanna start something called Forbes Advisor. Will you be the managing editor? And at the time I thought I'm retired. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I had no plans to keep working.

And it just seemed like a fun thing to do. So I was the managing editor. My plan was to do it for a year, get it up and running and turn it over to someone else. I ended up doing it for two years and turning it over to some folks who I think are just fantastic.

Well, that's great. That's a great story. I'm glad I could help out. I didn't realize that you became a deputy editor at Forbes. Now you have a website called robberger.com and you also have a financial freedom show on YouTube. And you have another website called allcards.com and that a website is about credit cards.

And you must be working 80 hours a week. Well, it's not quite that bad. Sometimes it feels like it. So they're each sort of their own little thing. So my idea with All Cards, and I have a couple of people that helped me with that site, I wanna come up with sort of a database of credit cards and bank accounts primarily that folks can go to and they can kind of see everything that's available rather than just a select few that you get from most credit card or banking sites.

You can basically just about everything. And that's taking some time, but fortunately I've got a lot of help. And in some ways it's just been kind of a thing that I do that's kind of fun 'cause it involves some programming, nothing sophisticated for sure, but the YouTube channel is probably where my heart is right now.

And the truth is, I come up with a topic, I hit record, I record the video, if it's not a live show and I publish it. There's no editing, there's no... I can have a video done and published in an hour. I might do some research depending on what the topic is ahead of time.

I've had some great folks on. I had Bill Behnken earlier this week, who's the father of the 4% rule. That was a fascinating conversation. I don't know if you know Harold Vinsky, but he's sort of the father of the bucket strategy, which Christine Benz talks a lot about at Morningstar.

I had him on Wednesday. That was a fascinating conversation. - By the way, it was a really interesting video with Harold and I'll get to it in a minute, but you were also a competitive chess player. So I wanna hear about that. - Yeah, it turns out I'm not a very good competitive player.

- Okay, okay. - Yeah, I've played chess since college and in my less lucid moments, I think I could become a master, which would be a rating of 2,200, but it's just over 2,000 and then my rating has taken a nosedive, which by the way happens by and large when you get to our age, I think.

In fact, I was in Philly over the 4th of July playing in the World Open, getting beat by eight and nine-year-olds. - (laughs) Okay. - Yeah. You can't see them behind me, but I've got chess books, chess software, databases. I'm like the golfer who has all these gadgets to try to improve their swing, but still shoots a 115.

And that's me in chess pretty much. - Yeah, I'm curious about what you just said though, this cognitive decline after a certain age. Is there some chess data statistically where the average chess player as they age, this number declines, is that out there somewhere? - I couldn't point you to a study, although I suspect they're out there, but I can tell you certainly at the World Championship level it's a young person's game.

At some point, Garry Kasparov got to an age where he couldn't keep up. I mean, obviously even today, he's like Michael Jordan. I'm gonna guess he's still a pretty good basketball player, right? But probably not gonna play in the NBA again. Garry, obviously a phenomenal chess player, but as you age, it's hard to keep up with the younger players.

Magnus Carlsen is the world champion now, still the best in the world, but there are several players that are probably gonna catch him, when, who knows. In my case, obviously I don't play at anything like that, of course. I don't know that it's a cognitive decline, at least maybe I just try to convince myself.

- Okay, well, that's my point. See, this is exactly what I'm getting at, because of just what you said, okay? It in fact is the cognitive decline, but we don't want to admit it. And I see it in myself. I've been trying to write a book for three years, same book, right?

Now, I've written a lot of books, right? You know, I used to be able to bang out a book, it seems like, every six months, boom, boom, boom. But here I am in my 60s, and I'm trying to write this book, and it's not a very complicated book. But I'm really struggling, and I can't tell whether or not I'm just trying to do a really, really good job, or if I'm having some sort of a cognitive decline issue.

Of course, I'd like to think that it's because I'm really trying to do a great job, and really trying to be very clear in everything I say, and maybe that is the case, you know? And I think this is an issue with people who are, let's say, in their 60s, which I am in my 60s now, my mid-60s, and we don't recognize cognitive decline for what it is.

And it's just interesting that, you know, you were talking about chess and talking about this, because when it comes to your investment portfolio when investing, there's a lot of things that can help you with cognitive decline. And one of them is keeping a portfolio very simple. And this gets me to circle back to your Harold Advansky discussion.

Because I'm sitting there watching that video, and you said to yourself, gee, you know, the bucket strategy, I used to have a three-bucket strategy, but realized that that was actually overly complicated, and now I'm going to more along the Harold Advansky view of just a two-bucket strategy. So you, you know, recall that conversation you had with Harold?

- Oh, sure, absolutely. - You know, what I see there is simplicity. In other words, for older investors, the simpler you can make things, the simpler you can make portfolios, the better it is. - When I first retired, right before I went to Forbes, and I thought I'm going to be living off my investments, the three-bucket strategy really appealed to me.

Maybe it's a little more complicated than two, but it's like, you know, how much more complicated can one extra bucket be, right? But when you actually start to sit down and figure out, okay, well, wait a minute, when am I going to move stocks from my, from bucket three to fixed income and bucket two?

I think the three-bucket approach just doesn't, at least it doesn't work for me, because I want to allocate my investments based on percentages, not based on years of expenses, which is effectively what the bucket strategy does. In a two-bucket strategy scenario, like Harold described in the interview, yeah, the cash bucket is based on years of expenses, but it's a very small component.

It may be just one year of cash, for example. And the rest is just, you know, your basic whatever, 70/30, 60/40, whatever works for you. So yeah, it is simpler, the two-bucket strategy, but I'm still not convinced that, frankly, a three-bucket strategy works for most people, because it changes the way you do your asset allocation, and I think that can lead to some problems, particularly depending on your withdrawal strategy.

- Yeah, initially, the bucket approach was what was called the Tobin Separation Rule, right? Tobin was a Nobel Laureate, and he basically said you have your risky assets, you have your non-risky assets. I mean, the two buckets. I mean, they didn't call it the bucket strategy back then, but that's what it was.

And so your risky assets generally were equity, but, you know, can be a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds. And the difference between the three-bucket approach and the two-bucket approach, I think, is that allocation to stocks and bonds and the two-bucket approach is constant. It doesn't change. And the only thing that changes is moving money from that riskier, longer-term bucket over to the cash bucket that you would need to live off of.

But it was funny that you said something. You said, "Gee, you know, I really am in line "with a lot of the things that you were telling me." This is what you said to Harold. He said, "I don't want people to think "that I'm stealing your ideas." But here was my comment about that, because again, you and I have been in this business a long time.

Harold's been in the business a long time. Of course, Jack Bogle was in the business for how many years? A long, long, long, longer than us, probably twice as long as us. But as you get older or as you get more experienced, you become simpler in the way you think about things.

And being simpler becomes much more helpful. So, it wasn't like you were copying Harold or that I was copying Harold or that any of us were copying Jack Bogle. I think that what happens is that as we get older and more experienced, and with or without cognitive decline, it doesn't matter, we just gravitate towards things that are simpler.

- Well, it absolutely describes my investing story. When I first started truly understanding index funds and asset allocation, of course, your book, "All About Asset Allocation," I think is one of the best out there. - I didn't pay you for that, by the way. I just want- - No, no.

That was unsolicited. - But thank you for that, Shill. I appreciate it. - Yeah, unsolicited endorsement. Back in the day, I can remember just being so upset that Vanguard didn't offer all of the really cool index funds that DFA offered. And that to get dimensional funds, and by the way, one of the founders, Sinkfield, is a big supporter of chess.

I don't know if you know that connection. In any event- - Oh, no, I did not. - Oh, yeah, he's funded the chess club in St. Louis in the Hall of Fame, and he has a Sinkfield Cup every year, big time. But I remember being so upset because I wasn't gonna pay an advisor to get access to these funds.

Now, they have some ETFs today. And I'm trying to figure out how can I get these cool funds with different factors, international, small cap value, and all these things. And today, fast forward 25 years or whatever, it's the last thing I would do. And it's not because there's necessarily anything wrong with doing that.

It's just that I don't need the aggravation. And there's no way to know if it's gonna improve your returns or your volatility. I mean, you can maybe make some educated guesses. We all can. But yeah, so I've absolutely moved from more complexity to less. And that's true even recently.

I've been thinking, well, do I really need an emerging market fund? Do I really need a REIT fund? I mean, again, good arguments to keep them, to have them. Certainly wouldn't talk anyone out of having a separate REIT fund. But boy, it simplifies the portfolio when you don't have all of those things.

And the other thing, Rick, that could be part of it, there's aging, right? And maybe you kind of wonder how that influences this. But the other thing is when you're starting out, maybe you've got a 401(k), maybe you've got an IRA. Well, today it feels like my wife and I have 47 different accounts, right?

It's not that many, but we've each got a rollover. We've each got a Roth. I've got an inherited. We've got two HSAs. We've got two taxable accounts. That's a whole nother story. It's almost like playing three-dimensional chess. So when you're trying to balance all of that, having a simpler portfolio, I think, helps a lot.

I really like that analogy with three-dimensional chess. Not only do you have a lot of individual investments in each of these individual accounts, because each of the accounts have to have investments, you've got all these different accounts. Because of taxes, you can't combine your Roth with your wife's Roth, and you can't combine an inherited IRA with a traditional IRA.

So you've got all these different accounts. But usually, if you have HSAs and 401(k)s, they even have different custodians. So you're talking about three different levels, right? You have custodians, you have accounts, you have individual investments. I mean, it really is complex. It's complex enough where, gee, I want to make it as simple as I can wherever I can.

Combine custodians and get rid of some that I don't need. Combine accounts, if I can roll a traditional IRA into a 401(k) that I might still be using, then that's what I can do. And within the investment side, try to have fewer and fewer investments. To me, I mean, I think that three-dimensional chess is a really good analogy for, let's make it as one-dimensional as we can.

But it's impossible, I mean, you can't. And I think that some of the tax regulation causes you to not be able to do that. And we'll get to more of this in a minute in how to organize portfolios when we start talking about all the tools and all of the work you've done to look at all these different tools and calculators that are on the internet, some for free, some with a little bit of cost, and where you can find all this information on your website and other places.

But before we do that, you wrote a book. And the book was called "Retire Before Mom and Dad, "The Simple Numbers Between a Lifetime "and Financial Freedom." Thank you for sending me a copy. I read it, I thought it was very good. Tell me about the book, what motivated you to write it, and what is it about?

- So it started out, actually, my original plan was to focus entirely on compounding. I was gonna call it money math, and someone pointed out that most people don't like math. (both laughing) That's true. And then I thought, you know, I really want young people to read it before they wake up and find themselves in their 40s and 50s and having not set aside money.

And so I called it "Retire Before Mom and Dad." And it kind of does take, I suppose, a young person's perspective, although it's not really about early retirement, although it certainly walks through the math. It's really about all the things you and I talk about, spending less than you make, investing the difference in a very simplified, low-cost, index fund portfolio, and then getting out of the way (laughs) and letting it do its thing.

And, you know, I go through some practical examples. I challenge, you know, I talk about, you know, thinking about your spending, what brings you happiness, how to test through life experiments what you think brings you happiness, which I've had on different occasions an opportunity to do. And so that's basically the book in a nutshell.

- And I thought the title, by the way, is what caught my eye. So you were right in changing the title Retire Before Mom and Dad. When I saw that, I said, that's a good title. It's catchy. It's better than investment math, money math. (laughs) So anyway, the name of the book is Retire Before Mom and Dad, The Simple Numbers Behind a Lifetime of Financial Freedom.

Okay, let's get into the nuts and bolts of why I really wanted you on. First of all, thank you, by the way, for participating in the Bogleheads Conference, which is coming up this October. You're gonna be one of our presenters. You're going to be on a panel. And I appreciate you coming to the conference and telling everyone about all the great things that you've done and a lot of your knowledge and helping to spread your knowledge among the Bogleheads.

The big draw is all of the financial tool reviews that you have on robberger.com. I mean, literally, it is a treasure chest of information, reviews on all of these different software programs, robo-advisors, on and on and on, all the different categories. I mean, you have spent an inordinate amount of time looking at all this.

And also, I know that you've looked at the Bogleheads wiki and the tools and calculators on the Bogleheads wiki. So first of all, could you tell me about your obsession with tools and calculators? And then we'll talk about some. - Let me first say in terms of the Boglehead site and the wiki, I don't think there's anything better.

I mean, in terms of just the information, it's phenomenal. The amount of work they've put into that is just extraordinary. And I find myself going back to it time and again. I was, in fact, just looking at it the other day in terms of withdrawal strategies. So in terms of tools, I'm kind of a tool junkie.

I just find the technology fascinating. Before I was a lawyer in the securities field, I litigated technology-related cases for about 10 or 15 years. And I just, I find it fascinating. And there's plenty more that I want to put on my site. I mean, in many ways, I've got far more work ahead of me.

And I kind of want to go beyond tools, too. I want to have a lot of detail on withdrawal strategies, frankly, a lot of detail on the different lazy portfolios. Because as much as I'd like to tell folks, well, just do the three fund and you're done, I know that some people just want some spice, I guess, in their portfolio.

- Yeah, icing on the cake. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. In terms of the tools, in fact, I was just reworking a page on my site where I basically listed the tools that I tend to use on a regular basis. Happy to talk about them. I kind of, you mentioned robo-advisors.

I certainly have some strong opinions about which ones I like. But I also cover things like retirement planning tools, calculators, just sort of investing tools. Like how do you know what your asset allocation is? How do you know not just what your investment fees are, but what effect they'll have on your portfolio over time?

- Well, let's start with the first group. Let's start with the retirement planning calculators because then that folds into asset allocation. And then we could talk about robo-advisors. So let's start with retirement planning tools. What's available out there? What's free? What's a low cost? Start with those. - Okay, so in terms of retirement planning that's free, one would be personal capital, which we'll probably talk about in a couple of different contexts.

So, and people have to understand what personal capital is. So personal capital is a registered investment advisor. So their business is getting, managing your assets for a percent of AUM. As a, frankly, as a marketing tool, they've built a pretty nice financial tool that's free. - Ah, do you have to be, you don't have to be a client to use it?

- No, I've used it since they launched it and I'm not a client. Basically, you connect all of your accounts or you can, you know, not just investment accounts, but you can connect bank accounts, all your debt. If you have debt, you can actually connect the value of your home.

They look up the price via Zillow for you. And it kind of does a little of everything. It shows you your net worth. You can use it as a budget, you know, spending tracker. It'll automatically categorize most of your spending. Some of it, it doesn't know the category for, but it does a pretty good job.

They have, I think, a pretty decent retirement planner. You know, based on the accounts you've connected, you can make certain assumptions. Of course, when you're going to retire, assumptions about how long you're going to live, inflation assumptions. And if you're married, you can factor that in. You can factor in expenses and income in retirement.

So maybe you're going to take a trip around the world. You can put that in with a date. In terms of a free retirement planning tool, particularly if you're still in the accumulation phase, you haven't actually retired, and you're just wanting to get sort of a bird's eye view of how you're doing, I think it's a pretty good tool.

- Okay. - But there's another one I like a lot that's free, but it's got a very specific purpose. It's called FICALC, so F-I-C-A-L-C dot app. That's the website. - Okay. - And what it allows you to do is put in, you know, how long your retirement's going to be, how much you have, how much you're going to spend, what your asset allocation is.

It's very simple, basically stocks, bonds, and cash. And then you can select from, oh, I don't know, maybe about a dozen withdrawal strategies. And then using historical data going back to 1926, which is effectively what Bill Bingen did in his '94 paper that gave us the 4% rule, it will crunch the numbers and tell you your chances of success.

Success being not running out of money, right? But the thing that I really like about this tool is that it will show you for all of the year. So, you know, starting in 1926, would you run out of money or not? But it'll also show you those 30 year scenarios, if that's how long you've put in for your planned retirement where you didn't run out of money, but you almost ran out of money.

Because I think that's as important as just quote unquote success. I'm not sure I'd call success, you know, on year 30, dying with $0, because that would have been a hard last year. And so it will show you those periods where, yeah, you didn't run out of money, but boy, you were close.

And you can actually click on each year and it'll give you details about how that retirement would have looked had you, for example, with the assumptions you put in and the withdrawal strategy you've chosen, you know, and retired in whatever, 1968 or whatever year you want, how that would have worked out.

And by the way, in the different withdrawal strategies, they include the Vanguard dynamic spending strategy. - Well, before we go on, could you explain what dynamic spending is? - Yeah, so if you think about the 4% rule, the way Bill Bingen tested it was you start with a certain percentage of your portfolio in year one, let's just assume 4%.

And then every year thereafter, the 4% is irrelevant. You just adjust the previous year's distribution by the rate of inflation. So that would be considered a static spending rule, static on an after inflation basis, because you're effectively spending the same amount of money on an after inflation basis throughout retirement.

Basically just about every other spending strategy is dynamic, right? Again, dynamic meaning the amounts changing on an after inflation basis. And on one extreme would be a fixed percentage. So you're just gonna take out 5% every year. And that's dynamic because, well, think of it this year, you know, the market's down 20%.

Let's say it ends the year that way. If you take your 5% this year, it's gonna be a lot lower than the 5% you took last year. So that would be sort of an extreme case. And frankly, the static approach that Bill Bingen took, I personally view as an extreme approach to retirement spending as well.

They're just sort of on opposite ends of the spectrum. - The 4% rule or any percentage, I've always had an issue with that because my expenses are going up with inflation and if my 4% is less than my expenses, that doesn't work. I still have to take the money out and pay my expenses.

- Again, the 4% only applies to the first year, right? - Okay, that's what I wanted to get across. - Yeah, and then you adjust for inflation. By the way, he believes with a somewhat more complicated portfolio, by the way, small cap, mid cap, even micro cap, it's 4.7%.

- Yeah, well, good luck with that. - Well, look, I'm just reporting what I've heard. - Fair enough. Okay, so we've got two now, two different programs. And is there a third one that you might like for retirement planning? - The most robust tool for consumers would be new retirement.

- Okay. - From a planner perspective, they're gonna use MoneyGuide Pro or eMoney Advisor and I've worked with both of those tools. But those are generally not available to consumers unless they have a planner that they're working with. New retirement is, I think, comparable to both of those tools.

And it's a very robust tool. It's not the kind of thing where you can just spend five minutes with it and have results. Because it walks through pretty much everything that would be relevant to spending during retirement. So it's gonna walk through long-term care insurance. It's gonna walk through social security questions.

It's gonna walk through Medicare and estimate your Medicare premiums and medical costs. You're going to enter your accounts, your investment accounts, and you can link them and have that data pulled in automatically or you can manually put them in if you're more comfortable with that, which is what I do.

But you're gonna set both pessimistic and optimistic return assumptions for every single account. Which is useful if, like me, you really take advantage of asset location, right? So 'cause my traditional retirement accounts, I don't expect the returns to be as high as my Roth and taxable accounts because of what I have invested in them.

And so you can make those assumptions separate on an account level. You can walk through, if you expect to get an inheritance at some point, you can model that. Maybe you have passive income or some other sort of side income in retirement. So you can model all of these things.

You can even model Roth conversions. And once you get done inputting all of this information, it gives you really a lot of both charts and tables showing you, here's your chances of success. Again, success defined as not running out of money. And they use Monte Carlo analysis. But it gives you a wealth of information.

It'll show you your tax brackets all the way through life expectancy, including when your RMDs kick in. It'll show you your state income tax. You can model, maybe you move. Maybe you live in California when you're working and you're gonna move to Texas or Tennessee for the taxes. When you retire, you can model that, including you can set separate inflation rates for real estate and model that home you're gonna buy 15 years from now.

And it'll change the tax implications depending on where you're gonna move from and to. So it really is, I mean, a feature rich tool. It is not free though. But I think the cost in my view is really reasonable. So they have three different tiers. The lowest, which gives you access to the tool is $120 a year.

- A year, $10 a month. - You can go up from there. They actually have started offering planning with a certified financial planner, if you want. - Is that extra obviously, or is that? - Yeah, so that starts at 1500 a year. But you can also do what they call Planner Plus Live.

I feel like I'm a salesperson. You can also do Planner Plus Live, which is 360 and you get one-on-one coaching. For me, I just use the tool. But for others, the coaching for a year might help. But for me, it's probably the most comprehensive retirement planning. It's really designed for when you're getting, I think, closer to retirement.

It's not the only one out there. There are some other interesting ones. But new retirement's probably my favorite. - The technology for do-it-yourself investors on the retirement planning side has really come a long way. Like you were saying, most of the technology used to be MoneyGuide Pro or eMoney.

And that's for people in the industry. But with these new companies coming along, the ability to do-it-yourself for do-it-yourself investors for a very nominal fee is really exciting, I think. - And I will say, it's a hard market. I mean, I think selling to advisors, planners, is a much easier, I mean, it's competitive, of course, but, you know, I mean, how many people really wanna dive into a tool like this?

I mean, those that do are probably all listening to your podcast, Rick. - I'm not sure, but-- - You know, you randomly ask a person on the street who's, say, within five years of retirement, hey, you wanna go to a coffee shop and spend three hours looking at retirement projections?

Probably not gonna get a lot of yeses. - But you know what, maybe employers, maybe employers at some point would incorporate this in their HR departments. - That's already happening. I can tell you that's already happening. - Oh, that's great. Let's get into something that is an important part of retirement planning and financial planning, and that's in investment software, asset allocation software, portfolio management software.

So this is kind of a part of it. You know, you've gotta get a certain rate of return or you're looking for a certain rate of return on your money. So let's talk about the tools that are available out there for doing investing. The free ones, the free ones, and then, you know, things that might cost a little bit.

- I think most of these are free that come to mind. Well, I'll go back to Personal Capital because they have a very slick asset allocation feature that's got graphical elements to it where it shows you, particularly on the U.S. side, I'm not sure the international side is as robust as I recall, but, you know, it shows you your, basically, your different asset classes in boxes and then in table form, and you can click on a box and it drills in, and it'll show you, you know, for your large cap value, here are the funds and what percentage each fund, you know, contributes to that asset class, and you can draw all the way down.

It'll show you sectors. And the other thing I like about it is they have a fee analyzer where, you know, of course, it pulls in the, it knows the fees of your funds, and that's pulled in automatically. If you have an advisor that's charging a AUM fee, you can model, you can include that.

You can also make assumptions of if you're still working, what your contributions are, and what, if there's an employer match, you can actually model that. And the thing I like about it then is it shows you how these fees will affect, you know, your wealth up until you retire, and you put that date in the tool.

That to me is probably, when I'm talking to folks that don't appreciate the impact of fees, you know, it's hard to say, well, 1%, what's that? You know, but when you show them, well, this is the impact over the next 25 years, boy, they wake up, that gets their attention.

So that's, I really like that tool. So that would be one. - Anything else? - Morningstar is kind of interesting right now. So I think in terms of just quickly understanding a fund, to me, Morningstar is probably the best thing out there. It's really good. - Is there a cost to the level that you're talking at?

- Right now, no. So if you just want to evaluate a fund, you can put the ticker in Morningstar. It'll give you, you know, it'll give you the style box, right, so it'll show you, is it small cap, large cap, value, growth, all of the, you know, give you all the valuation metrics, PE, price to book, price to sale.

Of course, it'll give you its expense ratio. It'll show you, I think they show for free the top 30 holdings, right? They have always had a portfolio tracker. At one point it was free. You had access to like the X-ray analysis and other things with the paid version. They're moving over to a new system.

It's actually investor.morningstar.com. And they sort of upped their game in terms of the user interface. 'Cause the old version was like, you know, 1990s called and it wanted its website back, right? I mean, it was really outdated. The new one is much better, but I still think it's a work in progress.

They're still trying to work out the kinks and figure it all out. You know, you get a wealth of data, but at some point it looks like a lot of the features now are behind, you know, you have to pay. Yeah, but it's still, I mean, an overall good tool.

Another one I like is Portfolio Visualizer. I don't know if you're familiar with that tool, but you can put in, it's not really to sort of track your investments, but you can put in a portfolio either based on asset classes or specific tickers. And it will show you the historical returns of that portfolio.

You can compare multiple portfolios. It'll show you, you know, rolling averages, say five, 10-year rolling average returns. It'll show you standard deviation. Of course, the compound annual growth rate. And they have some pre-programmed portfolios. Like they have the Bogleheads 3 Fund Portfolio where you just click a button and it fills in Vanguard funds and percentages.

And they also have one guy named Rick Ferry. I don't know if you've seen it, but your four fund, your core portfolio is in there. Well, I actually use it on that Core 4 website. Another part of the tool is they have a Monte Carlo simulator. You could kind of, it's kind of not like FI Calc, but you can put a specific portfolio in there and model the drawdown.

So you could put in like a million dollar portfolio or whatever. Assume, let's say a $45,000 initial withdrawal. Adjust it for inflation every year. And, but put your specific portfolio in there and it will model how that has done. And you can actually change a number of the different statistical assumptions.

But for example, it can use historical data. And so I find that tool to be extremely helpful. - Okay. Anything else out there for portfolio management and asset allocation? - I will mention one other tool in large part because I'm so frustrated that like all of the other brokers don't offer this.

I've used M1 Finance a bit. I don't have an account there now, but you can create a portfolio, very simple, low cost index fund portfolio and invest your money through M1 Finance. And then when it comes time to rebalance, first of all, when you can make new contributions, they will automatically put it into the various funds to try to bring you back to whatever your planned allocation is.

And you can also just click a button and they will automatically rebalance for you. Now I probably wouldn't do that in a taxable account or not without understanding the consequences, but within a retirement account, boy, that's pretty nifty. And I'm kind of waiting for, I don't know, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab.

It doesn't seem like it would be that complicated and investment advisors have rebalancing tools. But as far as I know, M1 Finance is the only one that's actually made it available, well, other than robo-advisors that do it for you. - Let's talk about robo-advisors for a bit. And then the last thing I wanna talk about are all the tools on the Bogleheads Wiki, calculators and tools.

So let's talk about all the work that you've done on evaluating robo-advisors. If someone decided they wanted to have another company manage their portfolio and do the rebalancing, could you go through your list of top three robos? - Yeah, and just for sort of perspective, I've used Wealthfront, I've used Betterment, and I've used Vanguard's digital advisory services.

And then I've spent a lot of time studying Schwab's and SoFi's and others. My personal favorite today is Betterment and I use it. We invest our credit card reward. So we get cash back or whatever, I don't spend it. We invest it. Part of that is to show people how small amounts of money, invested over time, can grow significantly.

And it also allows me, I move it from time to time just to test out different platforms. It wasn't in one finance at the moment, it's at Betterment. And I just really like Betterment. I mean, it's got great tax loss harvesting tools, which I don't view tax loss harvesting as some massive addition to a portfolio.

I think in some cases it could be, but it's there. They have an asset location tool if you have your retirement accounts there. I think they've got some great core portfolios. They have some other things I don't care for, but their core portfolio I think is good. And you can actually create your own.

You're limited in the ETFs you can use, but for a bogal head, they've got everything we could want. - Speak a little bit more about the asset location too. That interests me, how they do that. - They have an automated feature that when they're setting up your accounts, they'll do an asset location analysis and divide your investments based on an account type.

I've read about it. Like I said, I haven't used it, so I can't speak from experience, but it seems like the kind of thing that technology should be able to do for us pretty easily. And I still kind of marvel that it's not more widely available, but maybe it's available with other advisors.

Betterment's the only one at least that I know of. - Wealthfront was recently sold, correct? And you had money with them. I mean, how do you feel about Wealthfront and the fact that now they're owned by UBS? - Yeah, I liked Wealthfront. I mean, I think it's a solid robo-advisor.

It would probably be my top three if I were gonna come up with three. One could wonder what the sale, how that will affect it going forward. And I guess there's no way to really know. Maybe it'll have no effect. Maybe they'll invest more money in it, I don't know.

All of these robo-advisors, they're trying to survive, right? And so I do see them going in directions that I personally, maybe getting into crypto or getting into the smart beta kind of thing as examples or really pushing direct indexing as Fidelity and Schwab are both doing that now. And I'm just not convinced that these are things that for most people are worthwhile.

And in direct indexing, which you typically wanna do in a taxable account, I've talked to folks who decide later they wanna leave whatever. Yeah. Wealthfront's had direct indexing for a while. They wanna leave it and manage their own investments and they got 120 positions. At least, at least. Yeah, so you gotta be careful.

I know in theory, direct indexing, I think, has a lot of appeal in theory, but in the event, so you've gotta be careful as you evaluate what they offer. But overall, I like Wealthfront. I was not as impressed with Vanguard's digital advisory services. Now, this is the personal advisory service, but only basically the electronic portfolio management side?

No advice, no speaking with somebody? Correct. Yeah, there were a lot of technical issues. I mean, to their credit, they were eventually resolved. But it took me two weeks just to get the account going because of technical issues. And then pieces of it didn't work. But again, to their credit, they got it fixed.

It's not nearly as feature rich. I mean, in some ways, it's almost like a life strategy or a target date fund wrapped in a cool user interface. More tax efficient though, correct? More tax efficient than a balanced fund like a life strategy? Yeah. That's an interesting question. I mean, as you know, Vanguard had some issues with the taxes on their target date funds.

And I don't know if you saw, they reached an agreement with Massachusetts on that. But it's a good question, Rick. I don't know if it's more tax efficient or not. Okay, fair enough. Any other robos that you might like that you've looked at? SoFi is interesting. It's quote unquote free, but they use some proprietary indexes for some of their funds rather than the S&P 500.

And with Schwab, you've got, you're required to keep so much in cash. So it's quote unquote free, but not really. And you saw that settlement they had on that. Schwab settlement for holding a lot of money in cash. Yeah, yeah. So, I think the issue was that they were representing that it was free and that their recommendations were based sort of in the best interest of the users.

But whatever, I mean, I applaud companies for trying to make these tools available for quote unquote free, but you gotta be transparent. And you and I both know that holding six or 10 or 15% in cash in a portfolio is not free. Well, in addition, they also hold a lot of Schwab funds.

Not that the funds that they hold are really expensive, but they do hold, in the Intelligent Portfolio, they do hold a lot of Schwab ETFs. Yeah, the thing I look to, and maybe you do too, is one, are they based on a proprietary index or not? 'Cause Fidelity Zero funds, for example, are based on, and it's not that they're necessarily bad funds, but they're based on a Fidelity proprietary index, right?

Yeah, correct. I just feel more comfortable with the old S&P 500 or whatever sort of well-recognized index. And then, yeah, you gotta look at fees. I think, for the most part, these ETFs are pretty inexpensive. Okay, let's get into the last thing I wanna talk about, 'cause I asked you to take a look at this, is all of the tools that are available on the Bogleheads Wiki, Tools and Calculators page.

Just an incredible number of free tools, so have at it. Well, first of all, I would recommend that those folks listening are interested, go to it. I don't know if you can leave a link, but it's just Bogleheads Wiki, Tools and Calculators. And, I mean, you could spend a lifetime on the page, right?

I mean, it's like, I don't even know where to begin. It's like drinking from a fire hose. You know, a lot of the tools, some of them we've already talked about. Like, for example, backtesting, they mentioned Portfolio Visualizer as a good example. But they include things like a backtesting spreadsheet that the community put together.

I've not personally used it, but it's on my list to use it. And, you know, that kind of thing is very unique to the Bogleheads community, and I would highly recommend it. But, you know, they have bond calculators, if that's something that, you know, listeners are interested in. They link to tools, and Vanguard actually has a good one on, you know, college savings.

You know, if you're at that stage of life where you're saving for, say, a child's education. They have, you know, things like on life expectancy and calculators there. I tend to avoid looking at those things. I'm not sure I want to know. You know, but they have everything. They have a ton of loan and mortgage calculators.

And again, what these are, these are not necessarily things built by the Bogleheads. Some things like that spreadsheet I mentioned are, but these are just links to other calculators. One they have that's one of my favorites that I actually haven't been to in a while, but it's called Carl's Mortgage Calculator.

It's a simple mortgage calculator, but it's really easy to use. And, you know, if you're looking to figure out how much a mortgage is going to cost to buy a home, that's excellent. So yeah, they actually have dozens and dozens and dozens of retirement savings calculators on here, free ones and ones that you can buy.

They have a kind of a spreadsheet, you know, which ones do which and so forth. But again, like you said, you could spend a lifetime on here because they have put in so much time, all volunteers. I have put in so much time putting this wiki page together and all the different aspects of the free calculators and free tools page that it's just absolutely phenomenal.

I mean, literally anything that you're looking for this, if you don't know where to go first, to go to Bogleheads wiki tools and calculators is probably a good bet to go there. You'll find something. Yeah, the thing I would say, I mean, if you're a calculator junkie, like maybe you and I are, it's a great place to go.

If you're not, the thing I would say is, as you look through something like this great resource on the Bogleheads site, is just figure out what it is you need. We talked about a simple portfolio. I would keep the whole tools and calculator aspect as simple as possible too.

And if free tools work for you, then why pay for it, right? And if you get some benefit out of maybe more advanced tools then that's great too. But I mean, 'cause at the end of the day, I probably only use a handful of two or three or four tools on a somewhat regular basis, just because it's all you need really.

And so what's the next step for you, Rob? I mean, you're continuing to build out your website, you're continuing to do the YouTube videos, going down the credit card alley and working on that as well. I mean, where's it all going? What's the next step? I do have a couple of books that I wanna write.

Oh, okay, great. One about how to invest once you're retired. Investing in retirement. Yeah, because, and this hit me hard, I wasn't expecting it, but when I sold my sites and thought I was retired, I was really scared to spend our money, even though by every known calculation, we had plenty of money to retire.

It's nerve wracking to start spending your money. And at least I found it to be so. No, no, it's true. I mean, I work with a lot of clients. In fact, I had a call today, and this year where this client is transitioning from accumulation to distribution in retirement is the most nerve wracking time of your life, financially anyway, because you just don't know how it's gonna work.

And you've got a lot of questions and you could have substantial amount of assets and still be, and your spending be very low, and you're still afraid to make that leap. Yeah, and unfortunately in the industry, there are a lot of players that will try to profit from that fear.

Yeah, I agree. And yeah, you don't encounter that when you're 20 or 30 and you're just saving. But when you start to retire, then folks will try to scare you into certain products. So yeah, it's much more challenging than I had anticipated. - Any parting words for us, words of wisdom?

- Well, I do hope as many people as can come to the Boglehead Conference. I'm really looking forward to that. And I think where people can find me, the YouTube channel is kind of where my heart is in terms of trying to produce content that helps folks. It's not fancy.

I don't have like a production person and I don't even edit the videos. So like if I mess up, well, you get to see it all. But I do live shows as well. People ask me questions and I do my best to answer them. I think it's fun. I'm not sure if everyone else does, I don't know.

But people keep showing up, so. - Very good. Well, Rob, it's been a real pleasure having you on Boglehead's Uninvesting. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing you in person in October. And thanks for joining us today. - Thanks, Rick, really appreciate it. - This concludes this edition of Boglehead's Uninvesting.

Join us each month as we interview a new guest. In the meantime, visit boglecenter.net, bogleheads.org, the Boglehead's Wiki, Boglehead's Twitter. Listen live each week to Boglehead's Live on Twitter Spaces, the Boglehead's YouTube channel, Boglehead's Facebook, Boglehead's Reddit. Join one of your local Boglehead's chapters and get others to join.

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